


His Life for Xadia

by mayathewriter



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Claudia/Rayla, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marcos Died AU, Minor Character Death, Regent Amaya (The Dragon Prince), anyways its officially been tagged as raydia bc again i have no self control and i apologize, back on the angst train. toot toot, i changed my mind again viren bad, i changed the major warnings and the ratings bc they dont reflect the rest of the fic, its not much but its there i love them, yes ezran has brown eyes. what about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-08-02 23:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16315172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayathewriter/pseuds/mayathewriter
Summary: "Marcos was found dead in the woods, just outside of the castle's perimeter. I'm sorry."





	1. the sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for the first chapter: major character death, some descriptions of gore
> 
> enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beginning of the end

Rayla has trained for this her whole life. She knows what to do.

The guard falls back into the mud, pleas falling from his lips.

_Please!_

_Who are you?_

Thunder booms, reminiscent of the fallen king, and Rayla takes her first life.

 

Back at the castle, Soren has a very, very bad feeling.

“I wonder what’s taking Marcos so long? His patrol should be over by now,” he asks, not really expecting an answer from his fellow crownguards.

His answer, unexpected and wholly unwelcome, comes in the form of one of the other patrolling guards sprinting in, chestplate and helmet askew and gauntlets smeared with drying blood.

“Soren,” she says, panting, glancing around the room at the gathered guards before saying, “I’m so sorry.”

_His throat is torn, bloody ribbons barely keeping his head attached to his body, the face he had seen in the softest light of morning caught in a gruesome expression, a cross of fear and pain._

Soren’s heart falls.

_“No!”_

All he can do is cry.

 

Rayla can’t seem to get the blood out from under her fingernails. She uses whatever she can find, even the blade of her sword, but nothing can seem to scrape the garish red from against her skin.

“What are you doing?”

Runaan! Maybe he can help.

“There’s some blood left under my fingernails, I’m trying to get it out. See?”

Runaan frowns at the offered fingernails, confused, before glancing at her. His whole face softens, something that could almost be pity tinging his smile. “It’ll go away with time, don’t worry yourself with it.”

“But I want it _gone_ . How do _you_ get the blood out from your fingernails?”

“Rayla, just get some rest.” _Why won’t he answer the question?_   “I’m sending you home before we raid the castle.”

“What? You can’t do that! I’ve made my first kill, I’ve been training for this mission since- since-”

Runaan laid a placating hand on her shoulder. “The first is the hardest. It always is. Sometimes people need some time to recover afterwards.”

Rayla frowns, confused.

“Your nails are clean, Rayla.”

There’s a long silence, her eyes glancing between her hands and Runaan’s open, sympathetic face.

“I’ll pack my things.”

So the castle is raided, and Rayla is home, making dinner with Tinker and ignoring the red she still sees splashed over her hands.

 

_“We suspect it was moonshadow assassins.”_

_“What do we do?”_

_“What_ can _we do?”_

 

The raid happens at midnight, as expected. While not caught entirely unaware, the castle staff is underequipped for the siege they knew was coming.

Still, they fight. Some with tears in their eyes, crying for lost love as he cut down elf after elf, rage and grief keeping him on his feet, until a well-placed arrow of an elf that knows too well what it is like to lose love to war.

Some fight with anguished cries for a fallen brother, dark energy crackling at her fingertips as she keeps them off her and her father, before vanishing into the shadows of the castle, hoping to save the lives she can.

Some don’t. Some sit in their bedchambers, waiting for his fate to open his door. He greets them with a bittersweet smile, and a crown too big for his son already in its case.

 

The princes didn’t get out of the castle in time. There wasn’t enough time, for anything. Not for goodbyes, and not for letters of hope and encouragement.

Ezran is hidden in the passageways, waiting for Callum’s signal to come out. He knows what’s happening, he knows that there is something bad going on and that assassins are after him. He isn’t sure what that had to do with Callum waiting in a hidden room rather than a passageway, but Ezran trusted him.

“I’m looking for Prince Ezran.”

He shrinks back against the wall, as small and quiet as possible.

“I’m Prince Ezran.”

_What?_

A heavy sigh.

_What is he doing?_

“I’m sorry. You’re too young.”

_Callum!_

But Ezran could do nothing.

Wait for his signal, then it’s safe to come out…

It’ll come.

He’ll come.

_(No he won’t.)_

 

The siege was over. Three members of the high court remained--a young mage, filled with righteous anger and starving for revenge. A father, heartbroken as he watched his only living child fall to the darkness he'd tried to teach out of dark magic. And an aunt, who only had one living nephew now, and a dead sister, dead brother, dead nephew.

A day later, the first child king of Katolis was crowned by the court that would go down in history as The Heartbreak Court.

 

A week later, Xadia was still celebrating the retribution for the death of their king, their prince.

Rayla watched these parties blankly. Her arms were stained red up to the elbows.

Why was this affecting her so much? It was one life. A sacrifice, for the good of Xadia.

 _My heart for Xadia_ , she had said. 

_But what about her soul?_

In the end, she supposed, looking at the blood that smeared over her skin, her swords, her clothes, she didn't sacrifice that much. This was simply the price of taking his life for Xadia.

Rayla cast one last look out at the street, the cheering and music grating on her ears.

It wasn't worth it.

 


	2. the egg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> their story begins--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no chapter warnings this time around, enjoy!

The celebrations in Xadia are dying down when Rayla escapes to Katolis, the guilt eating her alive. It’s a long trek from her home to the castle, one she isn’t prepared to take but does anyways. It doesn’t matter. Even if she died on the way, her goal would be still accomplished.

She’s captured just over the border, alive, which puzzled her. She expected the remains of the crownguard to not be willing to take another risk with the moonshadow assassins, she _counted_ on them killing her on sight. But instead, Rayla is taken to a cell where she waits, until a small boy comes to meet her at the bars.

And when she says small, she means _small_ \--his fluff of hair barely comes up to her shoulder, and she’s never considered herself to be tall by any means. But his clothes are neat, a red tunic with gold detail work that fits him well, and her eyes follow him when he approaches her.

He can’t be older than ten, but she can see the shadows in his eyes, a specific brand of sleepless sorrow you can only really recognize when you have them yourself.

He asks her why she came to the castle, and she’s convinced that they don’t recognize her. Suddenly she’s confessing, on her knees in front of a little kid, to everything that’s happened since the guard died. The raid. The death. The neverending _guilt_.

She’s saying all of this, her voice coming in choked sobs, almost too fast and too emotional to realize that he’s gone very still in front of her. She fell quiet when she noticed his small hands, clenched into fists so tight they were shaking, but he didn’t look angry.

Anger would have been better than the blank nothing on his face.

“Why did you come here the first time?” he asked, and Rayla wished she didn’t see the tears welling in his eyes, voice still flat and hard, colder than before. “Why come here to kill the king and the prince?”

She looked up at him, eyes red rimmed and damp with tears.

“A life for a life,” she said, her voice hiccuping. “You took our king and our prince, so we took yours.”

“And you think that was the right thing to do?” he asked, frowning. “Do you _still_ think it’s the right thing to do?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

The boy blinked, any sort of hardness in his face melted away, leaving wide brown eyes that looked so, so young in the dim lighting of her cell.

“You came here to die?”

His voice broke, just a little, and all Rayla can do is nod. She’s cried too much today, carved her heart and hope out of her chest and gave it to the little boy who wears the same pain she does. He didn’t deserve it. Neither of them did, but what’s done is done and she knew, in a scene burned into her retinas and stained into her skin, that she was the catalyst.

Her eyes fell to the floor of her cell, and the boy left with his small footsteps bouncing around the cell, head high but shoulders slumped.

He’s too serious for a little kid, she decides in the time she’s alone. Too serious and too sad. Weight pressed down on her shoulders when she thought back to the raid. Had he been here when it happened?

Had he lost anyone?

 

Rayla wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the boy stopped by her cell, the only thing she was aware of being the plates of food one of the guards slipped through the cell bars, glaring at her. The plate for her fifth meal was full and resting on the floor where it was dropped off when someone else stopped by her cell. Someone new.

A girl, probably around her age, with dip-dyed hair and unrestrained anger in her eyes opened her cell with a heavy black key, not bothering to hold back any of the poison and vitriol she spat. It was almost a relief, to see another person, even if she looked like she hated Rayla with everything she had. Not that Rayla could blame her. She deserved it.

“Get up” the girl hissed, voice low and rough. Rayla couldn’t tell if it was from shouting or crying. Maybe both. “The king is sparing your life. Don’t make him wait.”

_Sparing your life. Sparing your life. Sparing your life. Sparing your life. Sparing your_

“Why?”

She didn’t mean to ask, but it made the girl reel back in confusion for a moment, softening the anger in her eyes for a split second. It came back hotter though, like she didn’t already know that Rayla had come here to die. That she’d never intended to make it past the borders.

Maybe she didn’t know. But the point still stood.

“He won’t tell” the girl muttered, impatiently grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. “Trust me, if it were up to anyone else you’d have been dead the minute you crossed the border. But he gave instructions to the guards to take any elves into custody and alive, so here you are.”

“Here I am,” Rayla said softly, her eyes trained on the floor. How she wished she wasn’t.

They walk to the throne room, and the first thing Rayla notices is the fluff of hair that didn’t come halfway up the back of it, a too-big crown circling his head, attached to a body whose legs couldn’t even reach the floor. The little boy who had come to her cell earlier sat on the throne, looking like a child playing dress-up.

But this was reality, and the king was dead.

_But so was the crown prince, so why--_

“King Ezran” the girl bows, before standing off to the side, next to an older man. “The prisoner.”

Rayla couldn’t even process that the prince that was said to die was Ezran, and that he’d been killed by Callisto a week ago. All she could think of was how small he was, and how big the title of ‘King’ looked on his small shoulders.

_What have I done?_

“You are not here to die,” the king said, voice far too somber and eyes far too blank. He sat slumped in his throne under the weight of his crown, but his dark brown eyes latched onto hers, commanding attention. “You are here to help me end this war, once and for all.”

He leapt off the throne, walking over to a stand that Rayla hadn’t noticed when she walked in, something large and oblong and faintly glowing under a sheet, which he yanked off without any more fanfare.

She swallowed, the lump in her throat stopping any noise from coming out as she blinked back tears. It was the egg of the Dragon Prince, alive and well. The egg Xadia mourned for, the egg that was believed to be dead for over four months. A death that needed no payment.

(A prince, dead. A guard, dead. Two deaths that hadn’t been paid for. She would pay. Eventually. But first, she needed to help the child king. Because now, her life belonged to Katolis.

Later, it would have her death, too.)

“Okay” she whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm continuing this fic!!! i loved the idea and refused to let it go so now that nanos done im gonna try and spend some more time on this. im not 100% sure where this is goin but u kno what? thats the fun of it. its probably not gna be super long but im not really sure tbh theres a chance this unintentionally ends up as a full fledged fic we'll see
> 
> just a heads up tho! because the original formatting of this fic wasn't really intended to be multichapter, i'm planning to shift it slightly to allow for longer chapters since these first two have been pretty short, so feel free to let me know if it feels off or anything like that!
> 
> see yall soon and as usual, check out my tumblr @moonshxdows where u can see me bitch about writing


	3. the return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--but the journey home isn't always a good one--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the only trigger i can think of it Rayla Isnt Doing Too Great (also i say the word murderer a lot)
> 
> sorry this is still so short! i'm hoping to make them longer once i have a full outline

The return to Xadia isn’t as hard as it could be, all things considered. They sidetrack around towns and people if they can, hoping to avoid any sort of recognition from the people, but the journey itself is not difficult.

The people she’s traveling with make it another story.

They avoid talking to her. It’s justified of course, and they answer questions if she asks, but for the most part, Rayla is left alone with her thoughts. Angry, poisonous thoughts that make her nauseous to go near on her best days.

So, she starts to learn.

Ralya learns about _them_ , between the snippets of conversation she can pick up and the questions she asks that occasionally get answered.

She learns that the girl is named Claudia, and her brother was betrothed to the guard she killed in the woods that day. Overheard that he died three days after his fiancé, but Claudia says she lost him the day he saw the body. She calls him Soren, once, but snaps he mouth shut when she notices the eavesdropper, glaring at Rayla like she would do something with his name, hurt him even past the veil of death. She also learned that Claudia had fallen deep into dark magic once her brother had died, and how she sneered when that knowledge made Rayla balk.

“What?” she had asked, taunting. “The murderer can’t handle a little black magic?”

Rayla tried to avoid Claudia after that, but the roiling nausea at being called a murderer never left her, the words forever dancing in the back of her mind.

She learns that the older man is named Viren, and that he was Claudia’s father and a childhood friend of the now-dead King Harrow. He had tried to teach Claudia magic without darkening the same parts of her that he suffered with, but had stopped, apparently, after Soren died. He has yet to actually speak with Rayla, instead preferring to give her sidelong glances filled with suspicion before pulling Claudia a few feet away from where she had been, a few feet further away from Rayla.

She tries to pretend it doesn’t sting every time he does, tries not to shout _I know! I know I’m a monster! You don’t need to remind me!_

Rayla also learns, at the beginning of the trip, before they’d learned about her enhanced hearing, how exactly the kingdom of Katolis came into possession of the egg. How Viren had helped lead the attack on the Dragon King, how he’d stolen the egg from under the Queen, and how he’d hid it from the royal family until Ezran found it himself, kept in a dungeon under the castle. It stripped Viren of any and all of his titles, making Ezran’s aunt, a general from another human kingdom and the fourth member of The Heartbreak Court, Regent of Katolis instead of him.

Later, she would ask Claudia if she knew about the egg, too. She was never given an answer, but Claudia shot her a dark look, and it was more than enough.

And slowly, Rayla learns about Ezran. How he was nine years old, loved jelly tarts, had a pet toad named Bait that he carried around with them. How he and his older brother ran when they heard about the attack but couldn’t leave in time to be safe. She learns about the king through him, that made bad jokes and gave the best hugs and was the superhero Ezran thought could never die. She learns about Callum, the best older brother that did stupid jerkface dances to make him feel better and loved Ezran so much that he died for him, under a false name he took to protect his little brother.

She learns that Ezran is the best type of person, the type that doesn’t ostracize or spit acid at an elf who indirectly caused the death of his immediate family. He’s the type of person that walks next to her when they travel by foot, and lets her hold Bait if he needs his hands free. He’s the type of person that makes Rayla’s heart break all over again, because he didn’t deserve any of this. None of them did. Even Claudia and Viren, who’d been nothing but cruel since they’d met him, had their reasons for hating her the way they did. It hurt, but Rayla understood their hatred, and understood that they didn’t deserve this. Nobody did, in her opinion, except maybe Rayla herself.

 _This could have been avoided,_ a dark, bitter voice in her head thinks one night, in lieu of the blood-soaked nightmares that usually plagued her sleep. _If you’d let him live, none of this would’ve happened._

She crawls out of her sleeping bag, hoping the all-encompassing guilt would stay there tonight. It didn’t. It never does.

_"The murderer can't handle a little black magic?"_

Rayla curls her knees to her chest, the dying fire leaving her face and arms too hot. The campsite is still, except for the smouldering, dying embers of the fire they’d built for the night. She stares, the afterimage burning itself into her eyelids, superimposed over Marcos’s dying face whenever she closes her eyes.

_murderer murderer murderer murderer murderer m_

She was so far into her own thoughts that it wasn’t until Ezran nearly screamed, startling her away from the fire, that she noticed he had been tossing and turning in his sleep.

“Ezran?” she asks quietly, turning away from the fire so she could face him. “Ezran, it's okay. You're all right. You had a nightmare, and it woke you up.”

“Rayla?” he murmurs, blinking at her in the dim light before glancing around. “Oh. I thought--”

“I know,” she says, curling a little further into herself. “It’s disorienting. But you’re in the campsite, now. Everything’s fine.”

Ezran nods, scooting forward so they sat next to each other, curled up and facing the fire.

Rayla lets the silence between them drag for another few moments, watching the campsite still again. Screams still rang in her ears, but dampened a little, like they were underwater. “You wanna talk about it?” she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire.

“Callum” he says quietly. “Dad, sometimes, but mostly Callum.”

She nods, chewing at her lip. “Mine are about Marcos,” she admits to the fire, glancing down at her bloodstained palms. His name spilled out of her mouth like rocks, unfamiliar off her tongue. She’d avoided saying it since Claudia told her what his name was. She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that way. “I still see his blood everywhere.”

Ezran nodded, tucking his chin between his knees. “When it’s my dad, it’s just what I can think up. Just… how he died, usually. Stuff like that. Stuff I heard second hand. When it’s Callum…”

Ezran takes a deep, shaky breath until his tiny hands are balled into even smaller fists, the words seeming to fight their way out. “I usually hear him dying. His last words. His body hitting the floor.”

And Rayla feels her heart break. “You were there?”

He just nods, hastily wiping tears from his cheeks. “I--I didn’t tell the others. They’d worry more than they already do and I don’t…”

Hesitantly, Rayla opens an arm for a hug, and he tucks his head onto her shoulder, small hands clutching at her tunic. “I’m supposed to be King,” he says quietly, voice breaking. “How am I supposed to replace my dad when I can’t even make it through this?”

Rayla didn’t have an answer. So instead, she hugged him a little tighter, ignored the damp patch she could feel forming on her shoulder, only moving when the sun broke above the trees.

 

“We need food,” Claudia says a few days after Rayla and Ezran's talk by the fire. “There's a town nearby. I think we should stop there and restock before we move closer to the border.”

“I could look for some food. We’d avoid being seen,” Rayla offers. “It wouldn’t take that long, there’s a lot of edible berries in the area, and I’m recognizing more plants the closer we get to the border.”

“Absolutely not,” Viren snaps. “I will go into town to buy us food. You three will stay here and see what you can find _together_.”

A retort is at the tip of her tongue when Ezran speaks up, voice level to an almost unsettling degree. “No. You'll be recognized too easily. Claudia will--”

“--go nowhere alone!” Viren growls, slamming his fist against the ground. “And I will not leave the elf alone with you.”

Rayla tried not to let her irritation show at that.

_murderer murderer murderer murderermurderermurd_

Ezran flinches away from the outburst, and Viren’s anger retreats almost immediately, fast enough that it almost seems out of character. “I apologize, my king,” he says meekly, looking at the ground. “I’m merely concerned for her safety. I don’t think it would be wise to leave her alone.”

“Okay,” Ezran shrugs, glancing over Viren’s shoulder and making eye contact with her. “Rayla can go with her.”

Viren turns purple.

 

“I don’t like this.”

“You’ve mentioned.”

“And I _don’t_ trust you.”

“Again, _you’ve mentioned_.”

Claudia shoots her a glare, walking a little faster towards the town market. “You've been holding your tongue at the campsites.”

“Have _you_ ever been on the receiving end of Ezran's disappointed stares?” Rayla asked, raising her eyebrows.

Claudia's face breaks for a split second, and she lets out a low, involuntary laugh. “You have a point,” she says, voice almost amused.

Then the hard façade is back, seeming harsher than before. “Don't do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act all… human, and stuff,” she mutters, folding her arms. “It's messing with my head. You're the last person who I should be letting my guard down around.”

Rayla huffs back in a brief moment of childishness she hasn't allowed herself to feel since Marcos's death. “Yeah, well, I don't exactly want _your_ guard to be down of all people. And I'm an _elf_ , so I can't exactly ‘act human.’”

“You know what I mean!” she hisses. “You're trying to seem nice so we trust you and you betray us. And fix your glove, your pinkie is falling over.”

She adjusts her glove, feeling her face flush. “Is that really what you think my plan is?” she mutters. “There was never a plan! I expected to die as soon as I saw blue!”

“Then why,” Claudia says under her breath as she hands some coins to the vendor for some food, “would you come back just to die?”

Rayla can _feel_ the blood pooling under the gloves, can hear the screams and pleas mingling in her ears. She clenches her jaw, fingers twitching at her sides before curling into tight fists. “Take a guess,” she bites out.

Claudia seems caught off guard by the response, stopping mid-step to face her. “Rayla--”

_murderer murderer murderermuRDERERMURDERER_

And she can't bring herself to care that this is the first time someone outside of Ezran called her by her name, her head too loud and hands far too red.

_I'm a murderer._

“Let's just get the food we need and go.”

 

The border between Xadia and the human kingdoms is a wide strip of rock, carving its way through miles of seemingly endless forest. It's a sight Rayla's familiar with; she’d been going to the home of the Dragon King since her parents had become part of the guard, and she's crossed it three times in as many weeks for the mission.

There was a kind of certainty to stepping onto that stone path for what she assumed was the last time, a certainty that grounded her, pulled her out of her own head for what felt like the first time in weeks.

Rayla was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this was an... interesting night. i hope everyone enjoyed it!
> 
> if you follow me on tumblr feel free to ignore this, but if not this is just a quick heads up about my posting schedule: i most likely will not be updating this fic for a month, maybe longer. i apologize, but i have a lot on my plate that needs to get done soon, and i also want my next update to be after at least somewhat fleshing out where this story is going and how many chapters i'm going to have. i know they've already arrived in xadia, but i'm working on building a story past this and making this longer with bigger character arcs and relationships and all that stuff. i should also have a better idea of what my posting schedule will be like once i've worked things out.
> 
> see you soon(ish?)!


	4. the separation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--sometimes paths diverge--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i ended up waking up before the season dropped anyways so hey yall its been a while
> 
> i'm sorry about how long the break ended up being! i'll try and make it shorter next time but school is kind of kicking my ass rn. however i do have an outline/chapter count so hopefully it'll be quicker
> 
> anyways. some info on tag updates. there's going to be bg raydia in this fic, but its mostly them just learning not to hate each other until the epilogue. so if that turns you off, i apologize and hope you enjoyed the fic until this point. if not, i hope you enjoy the rest of this fic!
> 
> anyways thats about it? enjoy everyone!

“What now?” Ezran asks as he set down his sleeping roll, gently setting his backpack on top of it. The faint glow of the dragon prince’s egg shone through the flaps, leaving a dappled effect on the forest floor that left Rayla in quiet, momentary awe. The rest of the group was wary of leaving her alone with the prince, even Ezran, but she understood. She’d do the same.

The party hasn’t gone too far off the charred border, just far enough for them to find a clearing, but it was far enough into Xadian territory to make Rayla nervous. They were far enough from the volcano where the Queen rested to avoid the risk of running into Dragonguard soldiers, but Rayla knew that the Earthstone elves keep watch religiously in case of human invaders trying to sabotage Xadian troops. Like them, but with worse motives.

Not that motivation would matter if they were caught. Getting caught in a party of humans with the egg would brand her as a traitor for the rest of her life, if she was lucky. A shudder goes down her spine at the thought of being forced back home with that added weight on her already too heavy shoulders. Runaan and Tinker would be heartbroken. And after what happened with her parents… 

No. She needs to see this through. She has to.

“Keep your voice down,” she murmurs, her worry coloring her voice harsher than she intended.

“How  _ dare _ you speak to the king like th-”

Rayla didn’t take a breath before she claps a hand over Viren’s mouth, the sound of Claudia pulling spell ingredients out of her bag drowned out by the heartbeat thrumming in her ears. “Keep. Your voice.  _ Down _ .” 

“Rayla,” Ezran says, thankfully keeping his voice low. “Stand down.” 

But she doesn’t move right away, fixing a glare on Viren. “We’re in Earthstone territory. It’s not going to help that I’m a Moonshadow elf when a guard catches us with the lost dragon prince because you decided it would be a good idea to yell.”

A tense moment passes before Rayla removes her hand. Viren’s glare follows her as Claudia herds him away from her, but not before giving Rayla a dirty look of her own. They beeline for their bedrolls, huddling together as they exchange heated whispers. Ezran gives Rayla a complicated, ultimately disappointed look before following, and she doesn't stay to figure it out, stalking to her edge of the clearing and sitting with her back to the others, clutching at her horns hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

_ Stupid stupid stupid. That was so stupid. Why would you do that? They’re going to kill you now, and you’re not even going to see this through. Why did you think that would be a good idea? Stupid. So, so stupid. _

_ Better that then getting caught. _

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Ezran. He must’ve finished talking to them about… whatever he had to talk to them about. Maybe it was how to let her down easy about how the rest of the party would be better off without her. That was a given, though, and Claudia and Viren wouldn’t care about letting her down easy about it. She knows.

“I know,” she grumbles, tugging at the base of her horns. “Sorry to keep putting you in these situations.”

A beat passes before Ez asks, “Are there really guards at the border?”

Rayla nods. “It was one of the first things we decided after the attack on the King. Guard rotations on the border are determined by the elves that live there, but there's always someone. There should be, anyways, but earthstone elves aren’t the type to leave things to other people.”

“Oh,” he says, voice small. A moment passes between them, Rayla keeping herself alert as she scans the clearing. “Are we… safe? Staying here for the night?”

“We’re not safe so long as we’re in Xadia,” Rayla says bluntly, guilt sinking in her stomach when Ezran’s face fell, tripping over herself to try and fix it. “But I’ll be keeping watch for part of the night. I’ll have to see how Viren and Claudia are willing to split it.”

“Ezran.” Claudia approaches the bedroll they’re sitting on, her gaze passing directly over Rayla. “My father wants to talk to you about dinner for the night, and he’s not really in the best mood.” 

Ezran, to Rayla’s surprise, giggles. “Like the time when Soren--”

“--destroyed his lab looking for jelly tarts?” Claudia finishes, laughing. “Not quite that bad. Hurry.”

She laughed. It catches Rayla so off guard to see a side of Claudia so vastly different from the icy exterior she normally gets from the young mage that when Claudia asks what they were talking about, she answers without thinking. “Guard rotations for tonight. I’ll take the first watch, you and your father can split up the rest of the night however you want.”

Claudia scoffs, whatever softness that Ez had brought out gone from her voice. “We won’t need  _ that _ ,” she says flippantly. “Me and my father constructed a magical border around the camp as soon as we got here. Nobody will be able to come in or out.”

The thought of being surrounded by a border created by dark magic makes Rayla nauseous, claustrophobic, even. She was never one of the most magically inclined elves, but she’s able to feel it once she focuses, eyes drifting shut. Magic buzzed through her ears, quiet enough that if Claudia hadn’t mentioned it, she likely wouldn’t recognize it for what it is. It hung on her heavier than the magic powder Runaan uses on missions, more noticeable than the illusions of a Moon Mage. It feels wrong, and leaves her feeling heavy if she thinks too hard about it.

Her eyes fly open to see Claudia’s smug, self-satisfied smile. “See? We’re perfectly safe,” Claudia says. Rayla must not be hiding her disgust well enough--or at all--because when she takes a step back Claudia’s face falls. “What?” she asks, too far on the side of defensive to be casual.

“What did you need for that spell?” Rayla says, not really a question. She doesn’t care. It had to be something  _ big _ , something powerful enough to hide the campsite. And then something else to try and mask that. “What did you have to  _ kill _ ?”

“Oh that’s  _ rich  _ coming from you--”

“At least I regret it!”

The rebuttal seems to catch Claudia off guard enough for Rayla to turn on her heel and stalk out of the campsite. “I need some fresh air,” she mutters. 

She lets the forest swallow her, damp and dark with trees towering over her and free from the dark magic lingering around the campsite. Air came easier to her lungs in the forest, leaving her feeling a little lighter, guilt staved away for a little longer than usual. Rayla sits at the base of a tree, tilting her head back and simply breathing. It rained recently.

It was raining when Marcos died.

_ Goddammit. _

The blood on her hands has dried now, sticking to her palms in tacky swaths of brown. She tried scratching it off, but to no avail. Of  _ course _ it wouldn’t work--she knew that. Marcos was dead,  _ has been _ dead for a while. There’s no blood on her hands.

When she opens her eyes it’s fresher, violent red again in place of brown. It smears when she rubs it between her fingers, but never rubs off on anything. Of course it doesn’t. This is fake. Everything about this is fake. 

_ But it wasn’t always _ .

Marcos's voice in her head starts to plead again, growing to a dull roar when black boots stop in front of her. She follows the figure up to a disgruntled looking mage, arms crossed. The shadows of the forest softened her glare, making her seem like she wasn’t entirely against following Rayla out here. Which she was. Obviously.

“Ezran wanted me to apologize,” Claudia says flatly, stepping back so Rayla doesn’t have to strain her neck to look at her. “So here I am. Apologizing. Will you please come back to the campsite now?”

Rayla snorts, half depreciating. “Right. Ezran tell you to say that, too? You’d much rather I drop dead out here, and so does Viren.” Claudia opens her mouth, presumably to deny it, but she cuts her off. “Don’t lie to me. I’m pretty sure you’ve said that to my face before.”

Claudia rolls her eyes, holding up a hand to stop Rayla from interrupting again. “I’m not asking because I want you there,” she says matter-of-factly. “But Ezran didn’t ask me to say that, either. I don’t know how you’ve done it, but he trusts you, Rayla. You make him feel safer than me or my father. And right now, Ezran is the priority. Not my father, not me, not you. He’s the only living royal of Katolis, and if you being on this mission means he sleeps better at night, then I’m willing to deal with it for him.”

Rayla blinks, taken by surprise. She expected something along the lines of needing her as a guide. Ezran trusting her… sits badly in her stomach. “He trusts me?” she asks, voice sounding fragile and broken even to her own ears. Claudia nods.

_ Why? _ she wonders. What would make Ezran, who’s lost so much at the hands of her brothers and sisters in arms, lost so much because of  _ her _ , trust her more than the royal mage and the girl he grew up with? Rayla doesn’t deserve that trust.

_ But maybe I can earn it. _

She looks up at Claudia to ask her a question, not entirely sure what, but stops when she sees her visibly stiffen.

“There’s someone near the camp,” she says, her voice quiet enough that even Rayla, with her enhanced hearing, could barely make it out. 

“What?” Rayla splutters as she pushes herself to her feet, mindful enough to keep her voice down. Any guilt evaporates off her shoulders, at least for the time being. “How do you know?”

Instead of answering, Claudia blanches further, eyes going wide. “The spell's down. We have to go.”

“The spell’s- what?” But Claudia had already taken off, running back towards the campsite. Rayla follows, falling into step beside her easily before speeding up, pulling ahead of Claudia with a million bad thoughts flying through her mind.  _ I shouldn’t have left, now Viren and Ezran were taken by guards and the egg- _

She bursts into the clearing, swords drawn and expecting a fight. Instead, she’s met with the bedrolls, exactly how they were left, and not a living soul in sight.

_ Ezran trusted me. And now he’s gone. _


	5. the thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--and sometimes they end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh. its been over two months. i don't really have much to say for myself except that this semester has been rough and i've had not much time. however!! track is now over and while the next month is full of ap exam and finals crunch i should have more time on my hands overall
> 
> also! i had to cut this chapter because it was already 1.1k longer than anything i'd written for this fic, and only halfway done so i didn't want you guys to wait much longer. so, the chapter count has gone up, which. oh well.
> 
> i've rambled too much and probably wanted to say more but! i dont remember so enjoy

Rayla’s hands are shaking, hard enough that the tremors are visible in the blades she still hasn’t sheathed. Is she breathing? She’s not sure that she’s breathing.

There’s something hollow beneath her ribs, deeply and painfully empty, sprouting up her chest and through her lungs and throat, invading her mouth and her brain and all she can do is  _ look _ , watch the empty clearing with eyes as hollow as her chest. Ezran had given her hope--and he had said she’d made him feel  _ safe _ . And he’s gone, might be dead, and it would be  _ all her fa-- _

“Rayla!” Claudia says, snapping her out of it. “There’s tracks. It looks like my dad and Ez must’ve escaped before the guards got here. If we start now, we should be able to catch up to them in an hour or so, depending on how fast they were going and when they left.”

“Right,” she mumbles, frantic eyes finally seeing the lack of a struggle, and the two sets of tracks that led out of the clearing. “You’re right. The trail should lead us right to them.”

But which trail? It should’ve been obvious--one set led East, deeper into the Xadian forest, and the other West, back to the human kingdoms--but something about the clearing seemed off.

“Where are Ezran’s footprints?” she asks, crouched next to the human tracks. “There’s only one set of footprints here, and they’re not Ezran’s. And, regardless, why wouldn’t the guards follow the trail? Earthblood elves are good trackers, almost as good as we are.”

“Well, they’re not over here,” Claudia says, standing over the elf trail. “My dad might’ve carried him. He’s too small to run very fast, especially after the day of hiking.”

“It wouldn’t slow him down?”

“Not anymore that Ezran on his feet would have.”

Rayla pauses, brow furrowing further as she considers the idea. It made  _ sense, _ so why couldn’t she seem to let go of the sinking feeling in her stomach? “And the tracks?”

Claudia rolls her eyes. “Magic. It’s the same cloaking spell as the one over the campsite, just weaker. There’s nothing suspicious going on, and if you keep trying to find something, they’re going to be too far gone for us to catch them. Let’s go.”

That didn’t help her nerves at all, frankly, but there was nothing else for her to do. Claudia was right--the longer they wait, the more distance is put between them and the king. So Rayla nods, giving her horns one last anxious tug before following the trail.

It’s the same path they took  _ into _ Xadia, a path Rayla chose because it would be harder for someone to track them coming in if they put in a little time to cover them. But Viren must’ve been in enough of a rush that he didn’t think to do so, leaving Rayla an easy-to-follow path of dusty footsteps and broken twigs on the ground.

The whole time they traveled, a weight refused to lift off her shoulders, pressing further and further down into the marrow of her bones. Something about all of this was  _ wrong _ , but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

The trail leads them back over the border before vanishing, the dusty footprints fading away on Katolian soil. “Strange,” she murmurs, running a finger over the dirt where the last visible footprint should have finished. “Claudia, I think I’ve lost the t-”

An invisible force slams Rayla backwards, knocking the breath from her lungs and sending her rolling to the ground. Her head rocks back against the cooled-lava rock, making the whole world pitch around her as she tries to drag herself to her feet.

Viren. He’s standing a few feet in front of Claudia, a hand extended. The bag at his side bulges with the egg, the same dappled light dimming from the magic swirling in his hands. Ezran is nowhere in sight.

“Claudia,” he says slowly. “I know Ezran wanted you to believe that taking the egg back would try and ease tensions between our nations, but it won’t. All it will do is deliver a powerful weapon into their hands, and it will drive a strife between us and the rest of the Pentarchy. If we return the most powerful thing we gained from the Fall of Thunder, it’s spitting in the face of all the sacrifices made for that to be possible.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, voice wavering. As he spoke, Claudia stepped between Rayla and her father, almost subconsciously. “Where’s Ezran?”

“That doesn’t matter. Just help me dispose of the elf and we can-”

Rayla can’t hear the rest of it, nearly collapsing as soon as she got to her feet. Her ears are ringing, but the headache was gone, replaced with buzzing adrenaline. The world seems a little darker, a little dimmer, the landscape around her shifting.

_ What’s going on? _

 

The scene is almost familiar, the rain that’s falling gently over her shoulders. It’s warm. Too warm? No, not quite. It’s not all of her that’s too warm, it’s just. Just her neck. A hand reaches up to touch it, but it’s not hers. It’s five-fingered, human. 

Familiar.

Everything clicks into place just as she sees the blood on Marcos’s hand, and she’s screaming.

_ It’s not real it’s not real not real not real notrealnotrealnotrealnotre _

It’s not real. It’s done. Marcos is dead.

The thought is almost soothing, allowing her to take a long, deep breath using lungs that were not hers and the throat she cut. Marcos is dead. She killed him.

The scene shifts.

She blinks and everything is white, with a lone figure sitting cross-legged in front of her. Throat cut but not bleeding, he looks at her with more kindness than Rayla feels like she deserves.

“Marcos?” she asks quietly, but she knows the answer. “You’re not real.”

“No,” he says simply. “This is all you, Rayla.”

“Why…”

“You have to answer that for yourself.”

How long has it been since she killed him? A month? More? It has to be, another full moon passed since they started their journey, with the second approaching rapidly. She rakes clean fingers through her hair, yanking on her horns as hard as she can. It doesn’t do much--the tugging on her scalp that normally calms her down was lost to her mindscape.

“Are you in pain?” The words almost hurt to say, too afraid of the answer.

“No,” he says, and it feels like a boon to the weight on her shoulders. “Do you regret it?”

“Killing you? Every minute of my life.”

Marcos smiles, thin and almost sad. “You know,” he says softly, kindly. How can he still be so kind, after everything? “That’s the first time you’ve admitted that. Even to yourself.”

 

The scene cuts out and she’s back in her own body, still disoriented, still fatigued, but herself. Alive. Okay, maybe, for the first time in a while. 

Sound is the first thing that comes back to her, the ringing in her ears fading away and making room for Claudia and Viren’s voices.  _ How long was I out? _

“-and it’s what your brother died for, too!”

“Where. Is. Ezran.”

“I  _ told  _ you! It doesn’t matter! But we need to go before-”

“Before what?” Claudia seethes, voice filled with enough vitriol that Rayla doesn’t need to see her to know what her face looks like. She’s been on the receiving end of that voice before. “Before Rayla wakes up? Before whatever you did to Ez comes back to bite you in the ass and your traitorous tendencies are reported back to the rest of the kingdom? So tell me,  _ what did you do to the king? _ ”

Viren sighs, and Rayla can crack her eyes open enough to see him roll his eyes. “If I tell you, will you stop throwing this temper tantrum?”

Claudia is visibly shaking, but says nothing.

“Sleeping spell. If he wasn’t there when you and the elf stopped fraternizing in the woods, the guards probably got him.”

There was a long stretch of silence as Rayla pulls herself to her feet, muscles screaming with fatigue but obliging. The last of the fogginess in her brain was clearing away, everything around her growing sharper along the edges as it did.

“That egg wasn’t worth Soren’s life. And it’s not worth Ezran’s, either,” Claudia says after a long time, her voice carefully controlled. “A thousand of those eggs wouldn’t be worth either of them.”

Viren takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as he folds his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry you feel that way. But I have the egg, and there isn’t much you can do. So come home with me, and-”

Rayla didn’t really think before she started moving. But as soon as Viren spoke, she realized that they needed to get the egg away from Viren, and she knew how.

Grabbing one of her swords, she curves it before running at a tree, swinging around and launching herself at Viren feet-first. He tried to stop her, magic crackling from his fingertips but she was faster, on him before the words could form on his tongue. He’s on the ground, and Rayla carefully untangles the knapsack from around him, the egg inside unhurt and still pulsing with life. 

“The egg is okay,” she breathes, before turning to Claudia, who’s frozen, looking at her with wide eyes. Rayla nudges Viren, who groans. “What do you want to do with him?”

Claudia seems conflicted, eyes darting between Rayla and Viren. A choice. “How much of a lead do the Earthblood elves have on us?”

“A day, probably,” Rayla sighs. “I don’t know if they would be able to recognize him as a human royal or not. If they do, they’re going to start sending him North to the queen in caravans. If they don’t… it might already be too late.”

That seems to confirm something for Claudia, her eyes steeling over as she sets her jaw. “Ezran is the priority. Leave him here, he won’t be able to do anything. There’s nothing left for him in Katolis.”

 

The trek back to the campsite is long, and the trek further is even longer. They’d been following the elven trail for less than an hour by the time it had started to get dark, and Rayla had to bodily pull Claudia off the path and into a cave, and even then, she just tried to leave again.

“You’re not going to be any use to Ezran if you’re caught out there, you know,” she says as Claudia slides down the slope from the cave mouth.

“Why do you care?” she says bitterly. “You’d probably rather do this on your own, anyways.”

Rayla shrugs. “Maybe, but they would kill you. I’d rather not have that happen.”

“Careful, you almost sound like you liked me for a second.” The words are biting, but her tone wavers, like she’s scared. Scared or holding back tears.

_ She’s trying to put up a front _ , Rayla realizes. 

A small part of Rayla feels sorry for her.

“Ezran needs you, too, Claudia.”

She stills at the bottom of the slope, and for a second Rayla thinks she just going to keep walking, vanish into the forest where the border guards reside. But she didn’t, turning and marching back up the slope, brushing off Rayla’s outstretched hand in the process. 

It isn’t until after Rayla sets up a small, concealable fire that Claudia speaks again, nearly scaring Rayla with the suddenness of it.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

Rayla rests her chin on her knees, curling her arms around herself. “It’s hard to… to reject your family like that. Especially when you don’t have any left. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

Claudia gives her a strange look before turning back to the fire, legs stretched out in front of her. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she says, turning over a piece of bread in her hand before biting into it. 

“Maybe.” Rayla took a sip from her dwindling flask of moonberry juice she’d had on her when she was captured in Katolis, only returned to her by Ezran a few days into their trip. She’d hopefully have the chance to refill it soon, since they were back in Xadia. She takes a deep breath, pursing her lips before answering Claudia’s expectant eyes.

“When Thunder was killed, my parents were part of the on-duty Dragonguard,” she starts, interlacing her fingers around her legs. “They just. Disappeared. They survived the attack, but never--never came home. I tried to defend  them at first, but they got so much backlash that if I kept going I’d be labeled a traitor. Rumors were already starting, so I publicly denounced my parents and switched from Dragonguard training to assassin training to kill the last of the rumors.”

Claudia nods, not in pity but in understanding. She casts a quick glance to the egg, sitting between them in a nest of Viren and Ezran’s blankets, before looking back at Rayla over the fire. “You wanted to be a Dragonguard?” she asks gently. Trying to see if it was a safe topic, maybe. 

Rayla feels a small smile crawl across her face, thinking back to her younger years. “Yeah,” she says fondly. “I wanted to be just like my mom. My uncle, Runaan--he’s not really my uncle, but he might as well have been--he oversaw assassin training mostly, but I had to train with him specially for a few years because I was the youngest Dragonguard trainee at the time.” Her face falls then, eyebrows knitting together. It really hasn’t been that long since the attack. Since her life turned on its head for the first time. “The switch wasn’t easy, but I adapted quickly enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

Rayla waves it off, scooting a few inches closer to the fire. “It’s alright. What about you? I spilled my guts and childhood dreams, you know. It’s not fair if you don’t.”

Claudia lets out a low, amused half-laugh. “Well, I’ve always wanted to be a mage like my dad,” she says, turning fond, glassy eyes towards the fire. “I found it so fascinating when I was little. Dad would make me and Soren our first toys out of magic. Even before I realized what it was exactly, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. He would have me practice with primal stones, since I always found those easier to use, before I graduated to dark magic. It was a little tricky at first, but once I figured it out I was really good at it. I was going to be the replacement for my dad as Royal Mage once we got back to Katolis, since Ezran stripped him of his titles. He joked that he was going to try and steal it back but… now…”

Claudia drags a hand across her face, sighing heavily. In the quiet of the night, illuminated only by the dying firelight and childhood memory, she seems much more vulnerable than she had earlier in the journey. “I think I made a mistake leaving him.”

“Would you rather he be here with us, knowing that he betrayed Ez?” Rayla asked, voice skeptical. “I think you made the right choice.”

“Right,” Claudia scoffs. “Like you know a whole lot about making ‘the right choice.’”

Rayla frowns, one hand coming up to rub over the sharp tip of her horn. The jab felt hollow, stung less than it would have yesterday. Her revelation earlier brought her some peace, and now it just feels tired.

“These are two very different situations and you know it,” she says, voice feeling heavy on her tongue. “Besides, even if it’s not now, killing Marcos  _ was _ the right choice at the time. If I hadn’t, the castle would have known we were coming ahead of time. My whole group would have either died or been captured.”

“And that makes it worth his life?” Claudia shoots back, hackles raising.

“Not at all,” she says, and Claudia seems to deflate. “I regret what I did that night for every minute of my life since, and I probably will for much longer, if not forever. But to me at the time, it was an order to keep the rest of my party safe. It was an order, to me, to do the right thing. Just like dark magic is the ‘right thing’ to you, when there’s a whole continent that would like to disagree.”

Instead of a sharp, jabbing retort about the comparison, Claudia just stares at Rayla, eyes wide and curious. When it becomes obvious that she wasn’t going to say anything in response, Rayla grabs one of her swords and a sharpening stone. “Get some rest,” she says, turning away from Claudia. “I’ll take first watch.”

Claudia nods and beds down mutely, closing her eyes with a pensive crease between her brows. Rayla watches her for a moment, before standing to make her way to the mouth of the cave. The clouds hang thick and low in the sky, blocking out any starlight or moonlight from above. The world below is buzzing with the remainder of dusk in Xadia. 

There was some rustling from behind her, sudden enough that Rayla would be on high alert if it hadn’t come from inside the cave. As it stood, it was just Claudia, shifting in half-sleep.

“Are you alright?” she asks, mind racing with possibilities of what could be happening in Claudia’s mind enough to pull her out of what she had assumed was near asleep.

“Fine,” Claudia mumbles into her bedroll. “G’night, Rayla.”

Something about that one simple sentence made Rayla smile, turning back to look at Claudia one last time before turning out to the rest of the world for the night watch.

“Good night, Claudia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have 0 self control when it comes to these 2 i swear
> 
> anyways comment and give kudos and all that if u liked! see you hopefully sooner!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! dont forget to subscribe if you liked it
> 
> check out my tdp tumblr for updates/other fics/to yell at me @moonshxdows


End file.
